1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a self-supporting package particularly for beverages and for drinking the content through a straw, and to a method for producing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
At present, as beverage containers, mention may be made of cans, glass bottles, blown bottles, paper packs and the like, but they have both merits and demerits in productivity, handleability, saving of resources, refuse disposal, preservation, design and the like. Particularly, the paper packs to which straws are attached, are very popular and are supplied at a low price, while they have demerits that they lack variety in shapes and the content cannot be seen. Recently, soft packaging containers in the form of a bag made of laminated films which have injection-molded spouts and caps have been developed, and these have been provided mainly at the field of foods such as beverage containers of small capacity owing to their excellent functions such as preservation, heat resistance, saving of resources and reclosability. Such soft packaging containers with spouts are disclosed in JP-U-61-137539, JP-U-62-90353, JP-U-63-34070, and JP-U-63-171350.
However, structure of these soft packaging containers with spouts is complicated, because a bag formed of laminated film is combined with an injection-molded spout in order to assure the excellent functions, and naturally they are higher in cost than other containers of the same capacity. Furthermore, in the case of beverage containers of small capacity, mostly the content is drunk up at one time, and hence the functions given thereto are superfluous. Thus, cheaper containers have been desired from the point of price of the products as a whole. Moreover, the soft packaging containers with spouts are not suitable for contents which require sterilization at high temperatures, and containers which are not limited in their contents have been desired.